We’ve written about Jonathan Turley plenty because he’s an interesting voice, he’s not hyperpartisan, and he calls it like he sees it. Also, he’s the Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law at The George Washington University Law School, where he teaches torts, criminal procedure, and constitutional law, so he knows what he’s talking about.
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And what he’s talking about right now is the danger that presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, pose to free speech rights in the U.S. Both have gone on record arguing that the First Amendment is malleable and that speech should be censored if they don’t like the viewpoints being expressed.
The undynamic duo regards our First Amendment rights merely as a privilege that can be taken from you according to their whims:
Talking about his new book, the professor brought the receipts on Kamala’s past banana-republic-style statements:
In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss how the Biden-Harris Administration has proven to be the most anti-free speech administration since John Adams. That includes a massive censorship system described by one federal judge as perfectly “Orwellian.”
In the CNN interview, Harris displays many of the anti-free speech inclinations discussed earlier. She strongly suggests that X should be shut down if it does not yield to demands for speech regulation.
What is most chilling is how censorship and closure are Harris’s default positions when faced with unfettered speech. She declares to CNN that such unregulated free speech “has to stop” and that there is a danger to the country when people are allowed to “directly speak to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight and regulation.”
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Here she is in 2019, shamelessly calling for Donald Trump to be muzzled (which he was):
Turley was appalled:
The “joy” being sold by Harris includes the promise of the removal of viewpoints that many on the left feel are intolerable or triggering on social media. Where Biden was viewed as an opportunist in embracing censorship, Harris is a true believer. Like Walz, she has long espoused a shockingly narrow view of free speech that is reflective of the wider anti-free speech movement in higher education.
The professor has a stark message for the electorate: your right to express yourself is on the ballot this November [emphasis mine].
[The election in 1800 where Thomas Jefferson defeated incumbent John Adams] was the only presidential election in our history where free speech was a central issue for voters. It should be again.
While democracy is really not on the ballot this election, free speech is.
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Turley is 100 percent right in his analysis, and Americans need to keep this firmly in mind as they cast their votes this fall: we’re facing a stark choice between freedom and autocracy.
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